Resettlement is an area of refugee policy that too often escapes scrutiny. It is often viewed as inherently benevolent and serves as a means for distant countries and progressive members of civil society to believe that they are \u2018making a difference\u2019. And yet, relative to its historical and cultural primacy in major resettlement countries such as the United States (US), Canada and Australia, resettlement\u2019s purpose and outcomes often evade debate or examination.<\/p>\n
Many of the more recent European resettlement policies emerged as knee-jerk responses to the European refugee \u2018crisis\u2019. For example, the UK\u2019s Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme was extended to 20,000 Syrians for one reason alone: the day after the body of the Syrian refugee child Alan Kurdi was depicted on the front page of every British newspaper, resettlement had become the answer.<\/p>\n
The purpose of resettlement is specified with surprising vagueness. It is supposedly a protection tool, a durable solution, a means to strategically leverage other durable solutions, and a form of burden sharing and international solidarity. Yet the impact of resettlement is almost never measured relative to any of these putative purposes. Because aims and objectives are often so imprecisely specified, there are no benchmarks or metrics to hold governments accountable for their resettlement practices or to measure what resettlement actually achieves. It is no wonder that it is so challenging for politicians to justify to electorates.<\/p>\n
A few provocative facts hint at why there are at least valid concerns to consider. Resettlement is consistently only available to the few: it is offered to less than 1% of the world\u2019s refugees. It is often not what refugees want: 70% of around 100,000 Syrian refugees approached by UNHCR about resettlement to Canada in late 2015 said they did not want resettlement to Canada. It leads to inequitable allocation of resources: we spend around US$135 on every refugee in the West for every US$1 we spend on a refugee in developing regions of the world.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n So why do Western states persevere with resettlement? Why is it the default means by which a country like the US supports refugees? There are many reasons. Some are cultural and historical, with some countries and regions having long-standing commitments to resettlement. But there is also an underlying political economy. The \u2018resettlement industry\u2019 is worth billions of dollars a year to the NGOs and civil society organisations that participate in it. In the US there is a significant amount of lobbying \u2013 much of it faith-based \u2013 in state capitals and in Washington DC to advocate for resettlement places, including for specific groups. Resettlement feels good and it feels cathartic.<\/p>\n But resettlement also increasingly serves an unspoken migration management function. It legitimates certain modes of entry for some refugees, and it delegitimates others. It is no coincidence that it is in some of the countries with the strongest resettlement traditions where spontaneous asylum is regarded with the greatest scepticism. In Australia, for example, those who arrive spontaneously are referred to as \u2018queue jumpers\u2019.<\/p>\n None of this is an argument not to engage in resettlement. Resettlement represents a potentially important part of the toolbox for protecting and assisting refugees. It potentially fulfils all of the functions that UNHCR associates it with. But what has been missing is a knowledge base that can empirically substantiate what it is that the umbrella category of \u2018resettlement\u2019 is achieving. Who is it actually helping \u2013 beyond sustaining the resettlement industry \u2013 and on what basis? As resettlement is gradually reconceptualised more broadly as \u2018pathways\u2019, these questions become ever more urgent.<\/p>\n Improving the evidence base<\/strong><\/p>\n Compared with other areas of refugee studies, there has been a striking lack of research on resettlement. It is one of the least evidence-based areas of refugee policy, led more by belief, habit and culture. Too often resettlement policies are built on historical precedent and effective lobbying, rather than on clearly defined objectives and carefully understood pathways to impact.<\/p>\n Resettlement\u2019s detractors often resort to empirically unsubstantiated claims: that it is a \u2018pull factor\u2019, attracting migrants to host countries in the region of origin, and that humanitarian assistance in the region provides a more efficient alternative to resettlement. Resettlement\u2019s proponents make claims that, for example, resettlement reduces spontaneous arrivals of asylum seekers beyond the region of origin and that it reinforces the commitment of host countries in the developing world\u2019s to asylum norms. Few of these claims \u2013 on either side \u2013 are necessarily wrong; it is just that they have not been tested.<\/p>\n Successive UNHCR documents have highlighted the range of functions served by resettlement. And yet there has been very little research to show whether, and if so when, resettlement actually fulfils these different types of objectives. But with research, these putative functions could be tested empirically. All of the goals of resettlement correspond to specific, testable hypotheses:<\/p>\n